Japan's Lessons on the Economy and the Environment: Our Pollution Experience video transcript

Today. Japan is recognised as both a major economic force and a leader in technology.

In the course of economic growth and the application of technology, Japan also earned a reputation as a heavily polluted country. This video is a record of some of these tragedies and the counter measures that were undertaken.

After World War 2, Japan went through an intense period of economic reconstruction. In a 1956, white paper on the economy, the Japanese government announced the era of post-war reconstruction has ended. Three symbolic consumer items became the popularly accepted definition of newfound prosperity. Refrigerators, washing machines and television sets. Mass production from factories, hastily built to provide goods and services to increasingly affluent consumers. Mass production, mass consumption. 

Japanese prime minister, Hayato Ikeda proclaimed his income doubling plan, to double real GNP within 10 years. This policy statement was a blueprint to spur rapid economic growth and consumption. Japan put great emphasis on the development of technologies into heavy and chemical industries. Many Seashores throughout the country were reclaimed to build high-technology, petrochemical complexes. Public transport systems such as highways and bullet train lines were constructed in rapid succession. For many Japanese the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games were a declaration of the nation's entry into the world scene as a member of the leading developed countries.

Unprecedented economic growth from the late 1950s until well into the 1960s, doubled national income within seven years. By 1968 Japanese GNP ranked second to the United States as the economy propelled, the nation towards economic superpower status.

But excessive priority on economic development, and increased production created devastating pollution problems for Japan.

As the national economy grew, the damage worsened.

The Ginsu river runs from the central mountains to the sea of Japan. The fertile paddy fields there were made over the course of two hundred years by local farmers.

The Ginsu river irrigated a vast area of adjacent rice paddies and provided the surrounding areas with water for drinking and daily use.

At the upper reaches of the Ginsu River, the Kamioka mine began production in 1589. Three centuries later in the 1880s industrialisation, turned the Kamioka mining station into the nation's leading, smelter of lead and the by-product sulfuric acid.

Damage to agriculture can be traced back to early this century when a strange disease primarily affecting women appeared in the Ginsu River Basin. The disease was characterised by extreme pain, throughout the entire body. It was later named Itai-itai, or ‘it hurts, it hurts’ after the victim screams of the unbearable pain. Patients bones were broken at the slightest movement and each breath was drawn in agony. 

The cause of this affliction was a combination of malnutrition alongside cadmium in the drinking water and the food chain, particularly rice. In 1957 a study was released which concluded that the itai-itai phenomenon was caused by poisonous substances discharged by the mind into the Ginsu River. This cadmium contaminated paddy fields and irrigation water, causing severe and lasting damage to the soil and the human body. 

Water, which previously sustained life became, instead a carrier of deadly poisons. 

In 1908 Shin Nihon Chisso built a factory in Minamata, a small fishing village in Kumamoto, Kyushu. The company, manufactured nitrogenous fertilizers and soon became the major industry in Minamata. By the mid-1950s Shin Nihon Chisso had become the industry leader in its field.

In 1954 the sanitation office of Minamata City began receiving reports of an unknown epilepsy like affliction, which has since become known as Minamata disease. Since the cause of the disease had not been identified, patients were isolated to prevent spread of the disease. Minamata disease is a neurological condition. Mercury poisons the central nervous system, damages the sense of balance and motor skills, which leads to increasingly intense body convulsions and ultimately death.

In 1957, the Minamata disease research group of Kumamoto University announced that Minamata disease, is a toxic disorder of the central nervous system caused by certain organic mercury compounds transmitted through the intake of seafood. They isolated organic mercury as the sole cause through a series of experiments on cats.

In the same year, extremely toxic levels of organic mercury were detected in the human patients.

The report submitted to the Ministry of Health and Welfare stated that the underlying cause was organic mercury in seafood. And the wastewater discharge from the factory was suspected. Afflicted patients continued to be found until 1960. A rash of babies were born with brain damage and extreme physical disabilities.

The governor of Kumamoto requested a voluntary ban on catches of seafood from the bay.

Japan's Lessons on the Economy and the Environment: Our Pollution Experience video

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